Loaded: best VU album, rite guys?

this is their 'fun' record, the one to play at parties, unless u r a goff

all of this info comes from that unterberger book, which seems to me to be the best book on the VU

Never read that... so where did I read the story Mo tells of when they were rehearsing with Yule, one of his first times, and he came up with the bassline for "Jesus" and Lou was all, "That is fantastic, Jeez, isn't this guy great?" or some such and Mo was like, "Hmmmmmmm, let's not blow this guy's ego up too much"?

that's in Uptight iirc. it is a pretty cool bass line tbh. yule says he basically spent a day w/ Lou right before that la cave gig learning about 30 VU songs.

which is crazy! as noted, the songs are not super complex, but just keeping them straight in your head seems like quite a task. that la cave show is amazingly killer though.

(xp) Yeah that's it, it was Lou reporting back to Mo + Sterling (who strike me as two people who were fairly hard to impress) the next day

Lost my copy of Upright, aargh, but a version of that story is also in a book called something like The Velvet Underground Reader

^^^ that reader is good shit

Mo + Sterling (who strike me as two people who were fairly hard to impress)

just watched a video of the 1st VU reunion in 1990 and sterling is pretty awesome in his i-don't-give-a-fuck-ness.

Book is actually The Velvet Underground Companion: Four Decades of Commentary, edited by Albin Zak III, is that the same one, Alfred? Interview with Nico is hilarious. The editor wrote two books I've been meaning to read, The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records and I Don't Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America.

yeah i have that one - it has some music students' thesis on sister ray, which compares it to madonna's "like a prayer."

Must have skipped that one.

lol just looked it up, i was wrong -- not "like a prayer" -- "express yourself."

he says that the "harmonic and melodic organization" of both songs "subvert the phallic narrative assumptions of standard western harmony."

Don't go for second best, baby, don't you know you'll stain the carpet?

Perhaps you preferred the prior piece, "Sylvia's Husband," by Donna Gaines.

haha, yeah, there is some interesting stuff in there.
the 1968 review of white light white heat is kind of amazing, too, in that it's simultaneously pretty insightful and totally off its rocker (lots of mel lyman references).

One good thing about the VU being a little under the radar back in the day is there wasn't an ocean of Baby Boomer inkspill about them to contend with. As far as I knew there was only whatever was in Trouser Press or The Voice, the Ellen Willis piece in Stranded and the CREEM guys calling Lou Butch Firbank.

http://scoobydoo.wikia.com/wiki/Butch_Firbanks

haha, yeah, there is some interesting stuff in there.
the 1968 review of white light white heat is kind of amazing, too, in that it's simultaneously pretty insightful and totally off its rocker (lots of mel lyman references).

That had to have been written by Wayne McGuire, right?

indeed!

Ahahaha, thought so!

Guy was apparently a bit of a nutcase with some 'peculiar' views on race and other things

yeah, that's the dude -- some deep investigation here: http://black2com.blogspot.com/2004/08/do-any-of-you-remember-wayne-mcguire.html

I feel the need to respond to the OP with a resounding NO, Loaded suxxx and its defenders are deluded at best, every single one of these songs that has a live version is better served by said live version.

happily deluded, then.

I crap on this album too much, it's such a great record. Listened to it today on the way to the river. "Who Loves the Sun" is the perfect goth Beach Boys song. Twee Anti-Monkees. "I Found A Reason" inventing slowcore w music from the hearts womb. "You are what you percieve" so beautiful so simple so spiritual. A lot of this album is joyful, and joyful in a pure way wo the trappings of perversion and noise found on the earlier more experimental work. The triangle is mixed really loud on "Who Loves the Sun" and I love it.

This is the VU's "LA Woman", the blues rock last gasp, maybe Reed thought the band would be over soon and wanted to do hyper real satirical versions of the west coast hippie rock that the VU was always opposed to. Underneath the good vibes and "Head Held High" there is this sneering cynicism, the too fast punk pace of "Lonesome Cowboy Bill". The urban cowboy who just sleeps around and crashes on couches and needs you to hear him yodelayheehoo. This is Bizarro VU, anti-cheerleaders for the prom king.

There is some soul in this stuff. "Sweet Jane" and "Rock n Roll" are both lo fi Dylan sped up and run through a gospel filter.

"Oh Sweet Nothing" is really amazing. It's a shame The Marshall Tucker Band ripped it off, "Can't You See" is nearly the exact same instrumental performance. It's weird because in their hands it was woman-blaming southern machismo flexing, but in the hands of the VU it is beautiful asexual transcendental ephemeral.

It's weird but I feel like "We're Only In It For the Money" and this have a lot in common.

"Train Going Round the Bend" is AMAZING. Those guitars. It's a track that would fit perfectly on "Slanted and Enchanted".

I must hate Velvet Underground because I love this album - and it's actually one of my favorite albums of all time - but I don't really rate the rest of their work that high. All VU fans I've met think I'm being stupid for rating Loaded as their best but just a listen to, I dunno, 'Sweet Jane' and you can immediately hear the unbelievable scope of this album. Almost every song in here feels joyful and miserable at the same time.
Take a look at these lyrics: “Jack is in his corset/Jane is in her vest/ and me, I’m in a rock and roll band.” the distinction is meaningless. Usually VU use a question and response on their lyrics which is mostly absent from Loaded. In Loaded it feels like they're just observers, not active and critical participants of their environment as they are in other albums. They dropped the dark, bleak band from previous albums and showed how they can contrast the rock rebellious spirit with pop sensibility just as easily.

The original version of the album is unfortunately a travesty: too many inner drama between the band, the label forcing needless edits and remixes of an album which was supposed to be 'loaded' with hits. If you're still unsure about this album the Fully Loaded and Peel Slowly editions correct some of this problems.

It's by far the VU album I listen to the most, but of course it's not as "important" as the others. 12 people on ilm think it's da best
Ranking the Velvet Underground studio albums

Favourite Velvet Underground album (with extra facility) say it's only five.

However, Ten people say it's their Fourth fav VU album

at the university gym last night, the 18-year-olds on the climbing wall were blasting this album, so it must be cool with the modern youth of today

xp haha, thorough msg board this

The original version of the album is unfortunately a travesty

Pardon my French, but this is utter bollocks. Also have never bought the idea that there's some sort of tongue-in-cheek laughing-up-their-sleeves Zappa/Mothers thing going on with this album.

If there is, it's limited to "I found a reason"

Good work on this thread by my friends from the Lou Guest DJ's on WPIX-FM Listening Thread, tylerw and Tom D.

xp agree I never thought of it as an ironic record, not at all like Zappa to me, on the contrary it has a lot of emotional and sincere statements

It seems to be their most mainstream record. Most conventional pop but still has something of a subversive edge.

I have the Fully Loaded version but might grab some version of the forthcoming one.

So once they've got through this they've reissued all the official during the lifetime Lps, or even slightly posthumous in this case. At least of the Lou years. Wonder what they will go onto next? Is there going to be anything further?

Might be nice to get some of the live stuff issued legitimately separately. Not sure on the legitimacy of the old bootleg stuff that has been put out outside of the boxsets. Has any of that been legit or all boot? Just seem to be selling through supposedly legit sites like Amazon.

yeah there are random bootlegs (boston tea party, la cave etc) that seem to be just selling in an "import" kinda way on amazon and elsewhere. not sure if there's some kind of grey area there or if no one cares at this point. I imagine the next thing will be an expanded Live 69, w/ the complete matrix tapes + end of cole avenue. think there's still at least 45+ minutes (maybe more?) of the matrix stuff they annoyingly left off of the last 45th anniversary box set.

xpost yeah I'm probably over-emphasizing the irony, and in half the songs there is definitely no irony things like "Rock n Roll" and "Reason" are as vulnerable as VU have ever been. But I tend to write off the country rock songs and yesterday they seemed a bit sped up and more of a caricature, like mutant versions of songs off "American Beauty", than just deadpan dad rock. I would still recommend the album over any other VU to Grateful Dead fans. Not sure if that was on purpose (I can totally picture Lou being told to write some commercial tracks and sneering at west coast rock "I'll show you how to write a choogle") or VU just has this underlying sinister beauty that shows up no matter what.

Yeah, I sort of think of Loaded (outside of "Rock n Roll", "Reason", and maybe "New Age") as the apotheosis of Lou's Pickwick period tendencies, where questions of sincerity are beside the point.